Bringing all of the sources of data into easy access mobile solutions with robust data visualization for the Department of Transportation
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics, of the Department of Transportation, was looking to a way to aggregate data from multiple sources and compile it into a single, simple, digital Pocket Guide. This Pocket Guide would provide access to DoT data through visualizations on smartphones to provide easy access to everyone to make more informed data-driven decisions.
Challenge
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics has numerous data sets, that were difficult to access, located in multiple locations and unavailable to everyone that required access, what was needed:
- Mobile Service – Put all of the information into a single location so that one mobile application could provide all of the available data
- Visualization – Aggregating the data alone would be a big step, but creating enhanced visualizations of the data was critical to identify trends
- Web Translation – Build the mobile solutions so that an extension back to the web would be a simple translation
- Distribute Information – Moving from literal data books and disparate data sources, the goal was to put all of the relevant data in anyone’s hands at any time
The applications had to be easy to use, despite the fact that they would be visualizing a tremendous amount of data. This required a simple interface and efficient design to ensure that the data could be presented quickly as needed.
How the Department of Transportation Solved it With Metova
Metova designed and developed a customer mobile app and API to allow self-service, integrating with the data solution to render the data efficiently and in a visual way that could be easily accessed on mobile solutions for iPhone and Android.
Results
- The BTS was able to provide a functional solution for all users
- All data is presented cleanly and elegantly through visualizations in a single app
- The web portal is able to leverage all data distribution outside of the mobile applications
The Technology Solution
Metova created an Android and iOS app that renders a web view displaying all the charts/graphs, the web portion is built using Ruby on Rails. The libraries used for creating the charts/graphs are chart kick and google charts. Metova also built out an admin portal for the client to manually update certain charts that are not coming through an API. Instead they upload the data that’s formatted on an Excel spreadsheet.
Metova setup four AWS running instances for both the DoT web app and admin portal using AWS EC2, ECS, and RDS.
